Personally, I'm not big on stories, diaries or comments implying the election is all but over. There's a long history of overconfident Democrats getting punked, an infinite palate of ways in which to blow it, and a political eternity in which to do so. Republicans have demonstrated how adept they are at driving down Democratic turnout and, in a multitude of creatively evil ways, preventing certain votes from ever seeing the light of day. At all times, we must be vigilant and fight as if we were 10 points down!
Subject to these very real caveats, one can't help but note the enormous chasm between Republicans and Democrats in online savvy. There has been much analysis of the role of technology in the re-emergence of the left, but I posit that never before has there been such a huge and obvious difference between the electronic sophistication of two campaigns (in this case, representing the best of a field of smart Democrats and the worst among a gaggle of tired Republicans).
A recent Politico article contrasts Obama, firing up the old Blackberry at every opportunity, with poor old McCain, who doesn't know where to find the switch on the back of the Atari.
Every time Obama had seven seconds when we spent the day together in South Carolina, he whipped out his Blackberry," recalled Noble. Contrast that to McCain's response when Politico's Mike Allen asked him whether he used a Mac or a PC: "Neither. I'm an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get."
The difference in ability to raise funds online, in small increments from grass roots donors, is clearly a huge advantage for Obama (so long as he doesn't shock all of us by agreeing to give it away). As the Politico article points out, there is also a huge contrast between the Obama campaign's deft use of the internet to support semi-autonomous bottom-up grass roots networks and the McCain campaign's traditional top-down organization in which volunteers await orders From on High.
Of late, the McCain campaign has brought in a new hotshot to revamp its internet presence. As many have pointed out, the McCain website appears to have plagiarized the look and feel (as well as content) from Obama's. Although this might provide comfort to some of his supporters, it must give pause that one of its main pages features what Tom Tomorrow coined McCain's "scary death rictus grin."
If that isn't revealing, how about this:
"I think we have a strong online operation," said Mark Soohoo, McCain's deputy e-campaign director. "It was good enough in the primaries."
Is he talking about the primaries against this guy? and this one? and this one?
If anyone still thinks the McCain campaign isn't way out of its league, it turns out they've been stealing recipes online and foisting them off as "family favorites."
Lauren Handel, an eagle-eyed attorney from New York, was searching for a specific recipe from Giada DeLaurentis, a chef on the Food Network. Yet whenever she Googled the different ingredients in the recipe, the oddest thing happened: not only did the Food Network's site come up, as expected, but so did John McCain's campaign site.
On a section of McCain's site called "Cindy's Recipes," you can find seven recipes attributed to Cindy McCain, each with the heading "McCain Family Recipe." Ms. Handel quickly realized that some of the "McCain Family Recipes," were in fact, word-for-word copies of recipes on the Food Network site.
At least three of the "McCain Family Recipes" appear to be lifted directly from the Food Network, while at least one is a Rachael Ray recipe with minor changes.
The fact that the McCain campaign overlooked the possibility that someone would discover this theft through the "magic" of a standard Google search speaks volumes.
Top that off with everything the internet makes easily accessible to ordinary citizens and one finds oneself wondering what happened to the evil genius Republicans that, for so long, seemed to frustrate Democrats at every turn. Is the GOP so utterly devoid of energy and ideas that the best they had to offer was this gaggle of clowns"?
Now, if only those crack MSM reporters and pundits would consider taking fair note of the many mistakes, flop-flops and flubs of Saint McCain.